The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  Her accent sparked curiosity, her looks admiration, but it was Bill who roused the men to attention.

  “Is that you, Mr. Leonard?” he said with a gum-cracking grin. “How’s the missus? She still suffering from weak nerves?”

  A broad-shouldered man with a face like a platter eyed Bill with new interest.

  “It’s grand to see you too, Ginger Jack,” Bill continued. “Is your boy Frank still in Scrubs, or did they let him out for good behavior?”

  A scrawny underfed gentleman in a flat cap and a pair of dungaree coveralls blearily sat up and took notice.

  “Why, Billy Smedley, as I live and breathe.” The barman put down Lucy’s gin with a smile of recognition. “What are you doing here?”

  “And with her?” Ginger Jack thumbed at Lucy. “She one of them Salvation Army birds come to tell us off over our evil ways?”

  Lucy tossed back her gin. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Ginger Jack pushed his way between her and Bill, looking her over from bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “She’s a Yank. I can tell by her talking. Hey, you know William Powell what was in Evelyn Prentice? That’s my favorite. Love me a good thriller.”

  “This is Lucy, Sean,” Bill explained to the barman. “She’s helping me find my mam.”

  “You try the shelter over—?”

  “If you say on Liverpool Street, I shall strangle you with your own snakeskin belt.” Lucy pushed her glass back across the bar for a refill. “Think harder.”

  “She always came here on a Saturday,” Bill supplied. “Never missed a evening out unless she was poorly.”

  “True, Tilda Smedley always did like to dress smart and enjoy a song and a drink of a weekend.”

  “That’s not all she liked.” Mr. Leonard cackled knowingly into his foaming tankard until Ginger Jack slapped him on the back of the head. The barman glared at both of them like a schoolmaster subduing two urchins before turning to Bill with a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders.

  “Tilda was always one of my better customers, but I ain’t seen her lately, Bill. Not for maybe two or three months.”

  Lucy perked up. “But it has been in the last two months. You’re sure of that.”

  The barman scratched his scalp as he considered. “I’m mostly certain. Seems like it was just toward the end of February.”

  “Aye, that it was,” Ginger Jack interrupted. “I remember she was wearing a pretty red scarf, and she’d a winter shine to her cheeks. Come in with a bloke I never seen before. Big fella. Sailor maybe, or a docker from down Poplar way? I never seen him round here before. Two of them were drinking and carrying on, even singing songs along with Wilkins on the piano. Always did have a nice voice to go with that pretty face of hers, did Tilda Smedley.”

  “A mite too pretty for her own good, if you ask me.” Mr. Leonard continued to smile like a baboon.

  “Well, no one was asking you, was they?”

  “She’d do better to find a nice man and settle down ’stead of walking out every Saturday with a different bloke. Why don’t she find a nice man and settle down, eh, Bill?”

  “She ain’t found the right one yet, I expect, Mr. Leonard. But Mam always says, you got to be kissing a lot of frogs before you find your prince.”

  “That leaves Leonard out. He’s all frog.”

  “I’m more of a catch than you any day, you old coot.”

  “Don’t be daft. Tilda’s young enough to be your daughter.”

  “You’re the one who’s daft. I’m only thirty-five.”

  “You ain’t seen thirty-five for a score of years at least, Crandall Leonard. And don’t even try to tell me otherwise.”

  Lucy felt like a spectator at a tennis match before she cut through the back-and-forth. “Hear that, Bill? She was alive and well in February. Now all we have to do is find out where she’s gone.”

  Every freckle on Bill’s face seemed to quiver with excitement. “Would any of you know where she might be living?”

  The men shook their heads, their earlier animation dimmed. But then, Ginger Jack straightened with a light bulb look on his weedy features. “Ace’d know where she’s off to.”

  The others agreed with nods of their heads. “Aye, that’s probably true. He’s an ear at every keyhole, does the lad. He’d know for sure.”

  “Ace?” Lucy asked.

  “His real name’s Valentine,” Bill answered, “but your life ain’t worth a tuppence if you call him that. It’s just Ace. He’s cracking. Taught me everything I know.”

  “A dubious distinction.” Lucy lifted an eyebrow in skeptical recognition. “He’s one of the boys at the Lion, isn’t he? One of the boys you’re always on about?”

  “He’s the boy. Everyone knows Ace. He’s grand.”

  Lucy just bet he was. Grand in a larcenous kind of way.

  “Where can we find this Ace?” She addressed the barman as he refilled her glass. He seemed to be the only one even halfway sober.

  His gaze grew shuttered. “Dunno where he might be this time of day, but he and his mates usually turn up here for a pint most evenings.”

  “If you see him, let him know Miss Stanhope is asking after him. We’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

  “I’ll tell him, but you want to be careful of Ace, miss. He and his boys, they ain’t exactly what you’d call gentlemen.”

  “All we want is news of Bill’s mother. Surely he can’t grudge us that.”

  “He might know or he might not, but either way it’ll cost you. And his price ain’t always in pounds and pence if you take my meanin’.”

  “I appreciate the warning.”

  “Ta, Mr. Leonard.” Bill scooted off the stool with a last freckled smile, his earlier grief evaporated. “Tell Fred I said hello, Ginger Jack.”

  “Will do, Billy. Next time I visit him in stir I’ll pass on your regards.”

  “Remember me to your mam, Bill. Tell her we miss seeing her pretty face here at the Lion,” Mr. Leonard said, smirking, which elicited another slap to the back of the head.

  Lucy lingered to finish her gin before following Bill, but she was held up by the barman’s hand on her arm.

  He seemed to study her closely. “It’s good of you to take an interest in the lad, miss. He’s not had a lot of proper raising up. More like t’other way around. It’s always been just the two of ’em, and he looked after his mum better than most boys twice his age. Tilda shouldn’t never have sent him away like she did.”

  “I’m sure she thought she was doing what was best for Bill.”

  “Maybe so. But doing what’s best ain’t always doing what’s right, is it?”

  Put it on Mr. Fortescue’s account.”

  It had been a long time since she’d used that particular phrase—and frankly, she wasn’t certain of its current efficacy—but the result was the same as always. An obsequious bow and a rush to do her bidding, even ahead of the elderly woman in the fox fur and the man wearing general’s tabs. Lucy had forgotten how nice it felt, especially after a day of tramping from pillar to post and back again. If Bill’s mother had vanished in a poof of magic, she could not have disappeared more thoroughly. Lucy could only hope Ace might offer up some clues. Bill might be content enough for now, but it wouldn’t take long for the worst of the what-ifs to reemerge. If history served her, these usually occurred between three and four in the morning when life was at its blackest.

  “Crikey, this place’s bigger than the Sayres’ whole house,” he said, exploring every inch of their hotel suite, including drawers, closets, cupboards, and even under the bed.

  Lucy quickly closed the door on the porter before he realized their deception and tossed them back out on the street. “My stepfather always stays here when he travels to London. My mother prefers Claridge’s. The Connaught doesn’t suit her sense of conspicuous consumption.”

  “You sure they won’t mind us staying here?”

  His question gave her pause for only a moment. “Quite sure.”

  �
�If they turn up, we could share. There’s plenty of room. I can sleep in the bathtub. It’d be jolly. Almost as good as sleeping in a shed.”

  Stretching out on the enormous sofa in the opulent sitting room, she gave a contented sigh. “The shed was definitely the high-water mark of my trip so far.”

  Bill began a tour of the bathroom while Lucy fantasized about rolling herself in a soft blanket for a twenty-four-hour nap with no interruptions.

  Sadly, reality meant dragging herself off the couch to assess the damage.

  What she met in her mirror did not inspire optimism: rat-tailed hair and wet, rumpled clothes more suited by style—and smell—to a Somerset dairy farm than a Mayfair nightclub. She shooed Bill out of the bathroom. “I’m going to scrub myself from top to bottom. Don’t bother me unless there’s fire or blood involved.”

  By the time she emerged from a long leisurely soak, lulled nearly to a stupor by gallons of steaming water and scented soap, she felt almost human again.

  Now for the heavy lifting.

  She sat at her dressing table, staring blindly at her reflection as she listened to the radiator clank and an attentive maid knock on a door farther down the corridor, the muffled sounds of Mount Street traffic underpinning the dulcet voice of Vera Lynn coming from the Ekco radio on the credenza. Past and present mingled and overlapped like inrushing waves and ebbing tides on the beach below Nanreath Hall. She felt disoriented, as if she were standing outside herself looking at an intimate stranger.

  “Lucy?” Bill held her hairbrush. “I can comb out your hair if you like.”

  “I don’t . . .” She paused when she saw the solemn, almost crestfallen look on his face. Perhaps he too found himself haunted by memories tonight. “Thank you, Bill. I don’t think I’ve had a nicer offer all day.”

  He drew the bristles through her damp hair. If Lucy closed her eyes, she could imagine it was her Chinese amah wielding the brush, and she was back in Singapore with the promise of a jazz-filled night drenched in champagne and caviar ahead of her.

  As she applied her carefully hoarded cosmetics, Lucy felt her nerves dissolving like a sugar cube at the bottom of a champagne flute.

  “You really do have a gentle touch, don’t you? Better than any high-end hair salon.”

  Bill grinned.

  She’d not realized how long her hair had grown since she’d arrived in England. She’d always kept it closer to shoulder length and arranged in elaborate pin curls or tight waves. Now it hung nearly to the middle of her back, straight, thick, and treacle dark.

  She’d always envied Amelia her shining mass of auburn curls. Loosed of its pins, it was a wild tangled cloud that fell to her hips, though it was rare anyone saw her like that. Not even Lucy had been allowed to see past the artistic perfection to the real woman beneath. Perhaps after so many years of playing a part, the attention-seeker within had forgotten how to be artless and unbound. Or perhaps there was simply nothing beneath the Max Factor façade to reveal. Perhaps Amelia really was thin as the newspaper society page and shallow as a looking glass.

  The excited tingle of anticipation sank to the pit of Lucy’s stomach like a bad oyster.

  What a horrible epitaph—to leave nothing behind simply because one gave nothing of oneself away.

  What if you found you could count on someone else?

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  She was recalled to the present and her watery blurred reflection staring back at her, unblinking, from the mirror. She dabbed at her mascara with a tissue. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “’Cause you’re crying.”

  A sharp knock at the door broke her from the depressing turn of her thoughts.

  A maid with her gown, freshly cleaned and pressed, followed by a porter bearing room service: finger sandwiches, scones warm from the oven, and an aromatic pot of Darjeeling to wash it down. But it was the bottle of wine that some particularly astute waiter in the bowels of the Connaught kitchens had provided that made Lucy smile.

  As Bill hovered over the platter with an imploring glance her direction, she laughed. “Go on. Have as much as you want. You’ve earned it.”

  “Crikey, miss. Ham, chicken, even cheese. The cream’s thick enough to stand my spoon up. And look at the berries. I’ve died and gone to my reward. You sure it’s legal?”

  “So far restaurants are exempt from rationing.”

  Bill’s response to this information involved downing two more sandwiches and another jam-covered scone. She’d never seen anyone take such pleasure in the simple act of eating, but then she’d never known anyone who’d lived without the guarantee of a next meal. “Don’t seem fair, do it? That those what got the money can live just as if there ain’t no war on.”

  “No, but it’s always been that way. The rich can afford to wear blinders.”

  “Maybe so, but that don’t make it right.” She was saved from answering when, seemingly sated, Bill collapsed across a chair clutching his stomach. “Blimey, I’m stuffed fatter than a Christmas goose.”

  “Then you can go wash up. And that means more than hands and face. I want every inch of you to touch water, do you hear?”

  “But I washed yesterday.”

  “And if I have my way, you’ll wash tomorrow as well. You reek of adolescent male.”

  “You’re like one of them medusas; ain’t that them women with snakes coming out of their mouths?”

  “Not quite, but your point is taken and I’m flattered.” She pointed. “Bath. Now.”

  He puffed himself up as if he might argue but, recognizing the steel in her gaze, chose to slink off, muttering under his breath about the unfairness of life.

  Alone, she found herself unable to eat but fortified herself with a tumblerful of liquid confidence before completing her toilette. No hot rollers available, she arranged her hair in a simple up-twist fastened off her face with a jeweled comb and finished her transformation with a liberal application of red Tangee lipstick and a spritz of Shalimar.

  She smiled in satisfaction at her reflection. Not exactly Dorothy Lamour but definitely second-glance worthy.

  Drawing off her robe, she oozed into the refurbished gown.

  The cool slink of the underskirt against her newly lotioned skin after days of rough wool and scratchy cotton immediately lifted her spirits. She fingered the expensive chiffon, the shimmering sequins along the bodice, the sleek cascade of material that skimmed her hips before flaring just above her knees. The ladies of the Charbury Sewing Circle had surpassed even her wildest imaginings. They had taken her ideas and improved upon them, turning Aunt Cynthia’s mothballed castoff into a unique and daring original design.

  She admired herself from every angle in the mirror, trying to imagine Aunt Cynthia—solidly middle-aged, duty-driven Aunt Cynthia—hot-footing the night away with some tuxedo-clad tulip of fashion at Café de Paris or the Kit-Cat Club.

  Bill emerged before her head exploded with the effort.

  “What do you think?” She pirouetted.

  “Crikey, miss. You look a real treat.”

  “Now if only Mason Oliver thinks so.”

  He sat on the edge of the sofa and watched her as she primped. “What if we found your mam too? Then you wouldn’t have to go to the States.”

  His words stole her breath like the punch of a fist.

  “I figured it all out while I was washing up. We can get Ace and the lads at the Lion. They got mates all over the city that tells ’em what’s what.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “You done for me, Miss Lucy, and now I do for you. Just like last time, eh? If you find her, you can stay here in England, maybe even in London, and we can still see each other. What do you say?”

  The BBC announced the hour, echoed by the faint sound of Big Ben’s chimes. A newscaster came on reading the headlines of the night. Bombs. Sinkings. Advances. Retreats. Death. Death. Death.

  Lucy sank back into the chair, her earlier pleasure gone. Instead
, anger burned up her throat and pounded at her temples.

  It was so damned typical of Amelia to leave without saying good-bye. Would it have killed her to toss off a last farewell wave before leaving Lucy with one more nanny, one more governess, one more headmistress? Or better yet, turn around—just once—to see Lucy standing alone? All she’d ever wanted was a smile, a hug, a “good show,” or a “well done.”

  Was that so impossible?

  “Lucy?” Bill said quietly.

  She smiled until her cheeks felt as if they might crack. “I think that’s a brilliant plan, Bill.”

  Chapter 20

  She made a show of emerging from her taxi, though she’d only hailed him round the corner after hoofing it most of the way from Mount Street. But appearances were everything and to be seen walking to the front entrance to the Dorchester as if she were queuing for a job would put her at a disadvantage right from the start.

  Lucy was down to her last seven shillings. If she played her cards right, she’d never have to use them.

  Being sure to ignore the attentive doorman, she swanned through the crowded lobby as if she owned it. She imagined herself as a pilot on a bombing raid. Target selected, route mapped out down to the smallest detail, taking into consideration every possible obstacle.

  As she left her wrap with the cloakroom attendant, she sensed the eyes and the curious whispers that followed her, though she’d die before she acknowledged them. With a regal tilt to her chin, Lucy passed through to the sumptuous promenade, where men, young and old, in uniforms from every country in the empire, mingled with glittering women in evening gowns. A babble of conversation underpinned the smoky romantic music being played by the orchestra in the ballroom next door. A pair of working girls plied their trade in a darkened corner with a couple of staff officers. Men in deceptively bland suits with deceptively bland faces met with others of the same ilk as big business was hashed out and secrets were bought and sold. A liveried waiter passed with a tray of drinks. A manager in a frock coat chivied a set of overworked porters.

  She smiled to be back among her own cutthroat kind.

  Sideways glances became stares. Conversations dwindled, picking up again once she moved on. Whispers from nearby followed her. She disregarded them all while committing every dropped name to memory and accepting every second look with a sultry flick of her lashes and a surreptitious curve of her lips. Mystery would be her calling card tonight.